Readers Rate Cuil

Both Cuil and Google had it, but I'm going to
give Cuil credit for rendering it first. Google had it second, followed by
movie reviews. This isn't a bad thing; it's probably smart to show people what
critics think of the movie. But when I search for "The Dark Knight,"
I want the official site first, so Cuil won on that one, barely.

However, enter "How to hit a baseball" on both and Google returns a
YouTube video for beginners, while Cuil produces a segment from About.com on
hitting in the third result from the left. Google gets the edge there for most
important results.

Others had varying results and experiences with Cuil.

The comments section in my piece from July 28 provided
more ammunition versus Cuil, as well as some fervent supporters who are clearly
tired of Google and want something new. For the record, I don't own Google
stock, though I wish I had bought in early like everyone else.

"I tried accessing Cuil and it was as good if not better than Google for
me," Anand wrote. "Remember that Google has had nearly 10 years of uncomparable
[sic] growth. So Cuil will certainly find it that much harder now that there
are quite a few of them over there in the market."

"I had no problems accessing cuil and I found it very refreshing new
entrant in the search engine space," wrote an anonymous reader. "I
hope users will give it the chance that it derserves [sic] rather than shoot it
down day one like your unfair article."

Now for the not-so-positive experiences. One anonymous reader, who is not a
Google user, wrote:

I was able to access
Cuil with no difficulty. However, I was quite disappointed with 2 of 3 searches
I ran there (admittedly both of them relatively obscure)-but I ran the same
searches on Google and got much better results. I do like the design of Cuil,
but, unless it can come up with more relevant and thorough results than other
search engines, I see no reason to use it. Back to Dogpile!

David added:

I was fairly
optimistic about cuil, as the developers were ex Google staff. The thing I was
taught about launching stuff was that if it is beta for public scrutiny,
feedback and testing, say so. Secondly, if you are going to skip that process
or take another testing route, don't launch until most of the bugs are worked
out. I am not pro Google or pro any software, hardware or company. I just like
what I like. I'm sure cuil will get it together, but soon is the word on the
street. To type in well known and popular search parameters, and not even have
anything remotely related come up is to head down the same road as Excite and
WebCrawler. I am positive the folks at cuil are working feverishly to sort
things, and I am looking forward to having an alternative engine at my finger
tips. It will be interesting to see what, if any portable apps they will be
rolling out.

Remember, folks, this is early days for Cuil. Your feedback will be
instrumental in shaping the site in the years to come. Expect advanced search
capabilities, but in the meantime just appreciate the distinct lack of
advertising on the site.

But don't get too comfortable; it's only a matter of time before Cuil looks to
monetize with ads to see some return on the $33 million investment venture
capitalists have made in the company.

Who can say if users will drop Google for Cuil? That's up to all of us. What
side of the fence are you on?